Description

Shortly after Alice returned from the miraculous trip through the Looking-Glass, her house was burnt down, and her parents died in the fire. Alice was the only survivor of the terrible accident. After repeated attempts at suicide, she gets locked up inside a mental institution and is slowly wasting away there before she is summoned to Wonderland again by the White Rabbit. But this time it's a Wonderland gone seriously bad and gory. The only chance for Alice to restore her peace of mind and find out more about the death of her parents is to fight through Wonderland and free it from the evil powers.

American McGee's Alice is a direct sequel to Lewis Carroll's book Through the Looking-Glass, itself a sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The player controls Alice as she tries to find her way and eventually escape from the demented surroundings of her own fantasy world that she's been thrust into. The surreal environments utilize themes from Lewis Carroll's original books, applying a noticeably darker and more violent edge to them.

The gameplay is third-person action with platforming, shooting, and light puzzle-solving elements. Alice starts with a knife, which can be used as a melee weapon or thrown at enemies. Later she acquires other weapons, such as a staff that shoots bolts of energy, dice that emit deadly gas, a time-stopping watch, and others. Weapons have an alternate fire mode, which usually inflicts more damage but depletes Alice's magical energy. The latter, along with Alice's health, can be restored by collecting the essence of defeated foes.

The game also features platforming sequences, during which Alice has to jump over gaps, avoid obstacles, or climb in order to reach her goal. Puzzle-solving usually involves manipulating the environment rather than using inventory items.

Forums

Trivia

Alice statue

Rogue Entertainment still has one of these aforementioned Alice statues, along with the Cheshire cat, in its Dallas offices. Only three (of Alice and the Cheshire cat) were created.

Cancelled port

A PS2 version was also in development but was canceled causing Rouge Entertainment to shut down, a decision which infuriated American McGee.

Extras

The game came with a "Casebook" that described how Alice got admitted to the mental asylum and how her doctor tried to cure her.

EA supplied an Alice statue to selected retail outlets for promotion. It was an evil looking Alice bearing a butcher's knife in bloody hands, and her skirt was bloody, too. In Germany however, the knife and blood were gone, instead, she was holding some playing cards.

Cover art

Later releases of the game in the U.S. had an altered cover art. In the original, Alice was seen on the cover holding a bloody knife, with blood stains all over her apron. There were two revisions to this; in the first one she can be seen holding an ice wand, and in the second revision she's holding a deck of cards. In both of them her apron is stain-free. The Cheshire Cat next to her even looks less skeletal in the new cover art.

Cut content

An early version of the game gave you the chance to summon the Cheshire Cat to fight by your side, but this feature was removed from the final game. You can still find some early pre-release screenshots around the net that showed this however.

Merchandise

As of 2004 a line of action figures based on the game is currently in stores.

Ratings

According to an Wired interview with American McGee
this game was Electronic Art's first 'M' rated release

References

On the "load/save" screen, you get three buttons to load, save or delete a game. Next to each button is a one-letter abbreviation of it's function. Did you notice that this spells out "LSD"?

Sales

According to an interview with American McGee, Alice sold over 1 million copies on the PC platform alone, contrary to reports saying it sold poorly.

Soundtrack

The original musical score for Alice was created by Chris Vrenna, former drummer for the band Nine Inch Nails.

There was a soundtrack for the game released when the game came out, which included music from the game, with dialogue from the various characters. As of 2004 you can still buy it from various retailers for $10, brand new.

The name of the soundtracks in the musical score are not completely correct. For instance, the musical score features a track named Battle with the Red Queen, but actually that track appears in the Skool level.

The musical score feature an "extra" track called Taking tea in Dreamland (the reason why it is called "extra" is that it doesn't appear in any levels throughout the game.

Awards

GameSpy

2000 – Special Award for Graphics

2000 – Special Award for Music

PC Powerplay (Germany)

Issue 11/2005 - #6 Game Which Absolutely Needs A Sequel (it eventually got one in 2011)

Related Web Sites

A White Rabbit, A Crazy Alice, and Mac OS X (An Apple Games article about the Macintosh version of Alice, with commentary being provided by Michael Rogers, president of Aspyr, the company responsible for porting the game to that platform. The article also provides a brief "Visitor's Guide to Wonderland" as well as general information about the game, including a brief background on Lewis Carroll.)

Walkthrough (A complete guide on Gameboomers from the beginning to the end of this game! (English))